Published: 20 May 2026
Last updated: 21 May 2026
According to the Talmud, God cries only in God’s most inner chambers. Yet, when God’s children are suffering, our sages explain, God openly releases two tears into the ocean, which reverberate like an earthquake throughout the world.
The Talmud continues to identify three moments that cause God to cry: when one can study Torah but does not; when one struggles to engage with Torah and still does; and when a leader abuses authority. I believe that God wept again on Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day).
My wife and I chose to get married on Yom Yerushalayim. The thought of us uniting on this day, on the anniversary of the Jewish people once again being returned as our whole eternal capital city, gifted our marriage the promise to live in tandem with the Jewish story.
For our engagement, she bought me a new pair of tefillin, as the line said while putting on tefillin, mostly by Jewish men throughout the ages: “And I will espouse you forever: I will espouse you with righteousness and justice, and with goodness and mercy,” resonated with our personal vision, and compelled us to emulate God’s values.
It was not lost on us that we face Jerusalem while saying our prayers. Our sages go further and teach us that even God wears tefillin. “Rav Ḥiyya bar Avin: What is written in the tefillin of the ruler of the world? Rav Ḥiyya bar Avin replied: It is written: “Who is like your people, Israel, one nation in the land?”
Yom Yerushalayim, 1967, created the promise of a divided city once again unified. Jerusalem’s name: Ir Shalom: City of peace/ wholeness, could become this new reality. Our prayers to be reunited with it were answered. Without Jerusalem, we were incomplete.
Comments1
Ian Grinblat24 May at 12:36 am
I am profoundly disappointed by this article. Here was an opportunity to explore some meaty issues but the writer has fallen back on feelings.
I don’t want to rain on his parade but it seems that he and his partner, in the flush of young love, forgot that Jerusalem was reunited through war, albeit a defensive war.
It is true that asserting a right does not necessarily lead to peace, but in the current situation, where the right of the entire Jewish people to land and life is challenged in deed as well as hate speech, I see no harm in asserting sovereignty legitimately acquired in a defensive war. I only wish that in 1967, the then-leaders of Israel had been so assertive.